On Baron Glynn’s planet, the red mobile knight—the Gerbera—had ripped the Vanadís Frey to shreds. Yet, in its cockpit, 3588 frowned. She had a gut feeling that she hadn’t actually destroyed the enemy.
“Man. I thought I’d beaten him,” she grumbled, turning the Gerbera back around.
“This is the Vanadís’s true form,” someone informed her.
Floating before 3588 was a slender craft: the Vanadís Frey, stripped of its auxiliary armor. It had a feminine frame, with two bulges on its chest despite being a mobile knight. Number 3588 couldn’t really understand what had happened.
“Sorry, but I can’t let you take me down that easily,” the enemy pilot added.
“This kind of thing’s not fair!”
Number 3588 hoped to defeat the Vanadís quickly now to draw Liam out, but the craft easily dodged the Flashes she threw at it. Having shed its auxiliary armor, the enemy craft was less durable, yet it was much swifter without all that extra weight.
“Its movements are completely different from before!”
Kurt called out to the confused 3588 on his external loudspeaker. “Surrender. You’ll never beat Liam—you can’t even beat me!”
Hearing her foe say that she couldn’t beat Liam made 3588 feel as though he was denying her very existence. She became so overwrought that she decided to use a trump card she’d been saving for Liam.
“I will beat him…! I have to beat him, or I’ll fail. I’m not a failure! Mr. Hat told me! He said I’d beat Liam!”
Kurt sensed the pain in 3588’s wails, even through her external loudspeaker. “Then you really are…”
“Time to get serious, Gerbera.” Number 3588 released her limiter. “I’ll show you that we’re the strongest!”
Since she’d been deemed a failure and abandoned, 3588 hadn’t received enough training to know when to use a trump card like this. Thus, she’d called on it far too easily.
The Gerbera’s camera eyes flashed brightly as its output climbed. Attacking Kurt’s Vanadís, the craft began to move in ways even a strengthened knight couldn’t have withstood. Still, the Vanadís avoided the attacks gracefully, as if dancing. Not only did it dodge each swing of the Gerbera’s blade, it even had leeway to slash at the enemy craft itself as they passed each other. The Vanadís’s blows might not have been strong powerful enough to pierce the Gerbera’s defenses, but the damage to the red craft was adding up.
“Ugh! Why can’t I hit you?!” Number 3588 screamed.
Kurt told her the reason. “If you’d trained on another pilot’s style, I might’ve been in trouble, but your fighting really resembles Liam’s. Do you think I’d lose to you when I’ve watched him so closely for so long?”
Kurt was at such an advantage because he knew Liam so well, having examined the count’s swordplay countless times since meeting him. Since Liam was a better knight than him—and for other reasons—Kurt had put time into studying him, which was now paying off.
But 3588 couldn’t comprehend her inability to win. “Shut up. Shut up, shut up!”
The Gerbera fired one Flash after another, but the Vanadís accelerated and gained some distance, concentrating on evading the red craft’s attacks. The Gerbera flew after it in pursuit, but that was when a change began to occur in 3588.
“Haah…haaah…”
The Gerbera was moving in ways that not even an adult knight could tolerate, so incredible pressure was pressing on the cockpit from all directions. And the reason 3588 had been labeled a failure in the first place was her endurance. She could only exert her full power for a short time. Her control over the red craft grew erratic, and its AI began to call for a change in pilot.
3588 started to cry, gripping her control sticks in frustration. “I promised Mr. Hat! I told him to watch ’cause I’d win! So why—”
Kurt wasn’t generous enough to let his chance slip by. “It’s over.”
The sword the Vanadís swung down at the Gerbera from overhead looked incredibly slow to 3588. Nevertheless, as she tried to evade it, her body wouldn’t cooperate. The blade struck, destroying the monitor in front of her.
✦ ✦ ✦
In the Vanadís Frey’s cockpit, Kurt covered his mouth at the image onscreen before him. He’d swung his blade down as hard as he could to destroy the Gerbera, and in doing so, he’d sliced into the craft’s cockpit hatch. Fortunately, the pilot inside wasn’t dead, but Kurt was disgusted by what he saw through the gap his blade had made in the hatch.
“They’d go this far sheerly to win?” Kurt didn’t even know who he was angry at. Should he blame Calvin or Cleo for this?
More important was the girl in the cockpit before him. Her long hair hadn’t been tied back, so it was all over the place, but she looked familiar nevertheless. Kurt knew better than to believe the foe had simply found someone who resembled Liam to replicate his techniques. It was easy enough to understand what they’d done. They’d cloned Liam—and when Kurt realized that, rage welled in him.
“No wonder Liam’s so desperate to win.”
As Kurt leaned back in his seat, the Gerbera’s pilot opened her eyes. She desperately tried to start her craft up again, but Kurt wasn’t an idiot. He’d destroyed the Gerbera’s joints while the machine was inactive.
The pilot must’ve realized that she’d lost, because she began weeping in her cockpit. Kurt’s chest hurt as he watched her cry like the child she so obviously was.
I’m only doing this for my own satisfaction, but…
Kurt opened the Vanadís’s cockpit hatch and leaned out, calling to the enemy pilot. “If you want to live, surrender peacefully! I won’t let any harm come to you.”
He climbed out onto the Vanadís’s palm and approached the Gerbera’s cockpit. With a nasty metallic groan, its cockpit hatch opened wider. Halfway open, it got stuck, so the pilot had to crawl out under it.
“You really won’t kill me? You won’t hurt me?”
Kurt widened his eyes at the sight of the girl who looked nearly identical to Liam—and he smiled. “No, I won’t. I promise.”
Saying that, he reached out his hand to her.